Introduction to github

2. Overview
1.
Install git and create a GitHub account
2.
What is git?
3.
How does git work?
4.
What is GitHub?
5.
Quick example using git and GitHub

4. Install git
• Windows
- http://git-scm.com/download/win
• Linux (Debian)
- Command: sudo apt-get install git!
• Mac
- http://git-scm.com/download/mac

5. Create GitHub account
• www.github.com
• Free for public repositories

7. What is version control?
• A system that keeps records of your
changes
• Allows for collaborative development
• Allows you to know who made what
changes and when
• Allows you to revert any changes
and go back to a previous state

9. Git is a version control system!
• Distributed version control
• Users keep entire code and history
on their location machines
• Users can make any changes without
internet access
• (Except pushing and pulling changes
from a remote server)

10. What is git?
• Started in 2005
• Created by Linus Torvald to aid in
Linux kernel development
Git icon

12. What is git?
• Git isn’t the only version control
system
• But (we think) it’s the best

14. How does git work?
• Can be complicated at first, but
there are a few key concepts
• Important git terminology in
following slides are blue

15. Key Concepts: Snapshots
• The way git keeps track of your code
history
• Essentially records what all your files look
like at a given point in time
• You decide when to take a snapshot, and
of what files
• Have the ability to go back to visit any
snapshot

16. Key Concepts: Commit
• The act of creating a snapshot
• Can be a noun or verb
“I commited code”
“I just made a new commit”
• Essentially, a project is made up of
a bunch of commits

17. Key Concepts: Commit
• Commits contain three pieces of
information:
1. Information about how the files
changed from previously
2. A reference to the commit that came
before it • Called the “parent commit”
3. A hash code name
• Will look something like:
fb2d2ec5069fc6776c80b3ad6b7cbde3cade4e

18. Hash Code
Parent Commit
What was changed

19. Key Concepts: Repositories
• Often shortened to ‘repo’
• A collection of all the files and
the history of those files
• Consists of all your commits
• Can live on a local machine or on a
remote server (GitHub!)

20. Key Concepts: Cloning
• The act of copying a repository
from a remote server is called
cloning
• Cloning from a remote server
allows teams to work together

21. Key Concepts: Pulling
• The process of downloading commits
that don’t exist on your machine
from a remote repository is called
pulling changes

22. Key Concepts: Pushing
• The process of adding your local
changes to the remote repository is
called pushing changes

24. How do you make a commit anyway?
• There are a lot of ‘states’ and ‘places’
a file can be
• Local on your computer: the ‘working
directory’
• When a file is ready to be put in a
commit you add it onto the ‘index’ or
‘staging’

25. The process:
• Make some changes to a file
• Use the ‘git add’ command to put the
file onto the staging environment
• Use the ‘git commit’ command to
create a new commit’

28. What is GitHub?
• Largest web-based git repository
hosting service
• Allows for code collaboration with
anyone online
• Adds extra functionality on top of git
• UI, documentation, bug tracking, feature
requests, pull requests, and more!

29. What is GitHub?
• Founded in 2008
• Also has an Enterprise edition
for businesses

31. Additional Resources
• Official git site and tutorial:
https://git-scm.com/
• GitHub guides:
https://guides.github.com/
• Command cheatsheet:
https://training.github.com/kit/
downloads/github-git-cheat-sheet.pdf